OCIAL DEVELOPMENT NOTES ENVIRONMENTALLY AND SOCIALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVEILOPMENT NETWORK Note No. 34 May 1998 Social Assess:ment in Tajikistan Brings Rural Realities to Urban Decisionmakers A social assessment was done during the with inadequate basic data have been preparation of Tajikistan's Pilot Poverty compounded by difficulties with in-country Alleviation Project to answer severaLl key travel. As a result, a knowledge gap exists questions: What are poor people's priority between urban decisionmakers and rural needs and wants? Why are they poor? What realities. are their own strategies for improving their The project team used a social assessment lives? And how can they be helped to to narrow this gap. It was implemented in improve their circumstances? several stages, including a desk study to By answering these questions, the social review and summarize available information, assessment helped the project team a two-day in-country workshop to lay the incorporate poor people's priorities for basis for the social assessment and to poverty alleviation, identify nongovern- conduct an initial poverty ranking, a five- mental organizations (NGOs) whose scaled- week field study conducted by a consultant up programs would form part of the project, and a team of Tajik nationals, a review of the understand and address risks to project findings at a national workshop, a special success, build local capacity to carry out field study undertaken by a lawyer and a participatory research, and influence the human rights specialist of the problems of national dialogue on poverty and the local harassment of poor people, and an potential role of small-scale, participatory ongoing survey of institutions that could microprojects for poverty alleviation. The help monitor and mitigate poverty. Pilot Poverty Alleviation Project is designed . . to improve poor people's lives by scaling-up Intial Workshop international NGO programs and financing Nearly 60 senior civil servants and relief, small, participatory microprojects through rehabilitation, and development agency the recently established Tajikistan Social officials gave their perspectives on poverty Investment Fund. at a two-day social assessment launch Why Social Assessment? workshop in Dushanbe. Working in groups, these officials selected key poverty indicators Tajikistan, one of the poorest former (see Box 1), scaled and mapped them by Soviet republics, has suffered prolonged district, and then used pairwise ranking (see macro-economic difficulties and civil Box 2) to order the districts by incidence of conflict. As one response to the country's poverty. Workshop participants deliberately pressing development needs, the avoided comparing the country's four main government and the World Bank are looking regions because of prevailing sensitivities to small-scale projects and solutions. But about regional disparities. project planners have found that problems Michael Mills is the task team leader of the Tajikistan Pilot Poverty Alleviation Project. For more information on the social assessment, contact Keith Rennie, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA, Fax: 202-477-0432, E-mail jrennie@worldbank.org. The viewus expressed in this note are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect thle official policies of thle World Bank. Box 1. Urban Decisionmakers' The Field Study Wealth Indicators A team of 11 Tajik nationals trained in in thematic groups, the social assessment participatory and rural appraisal techniques workshop paricipants selected the following undertook the five-week field assessment of indicators and scales, which they then used to poverty. The team worked in seven areas rank districts based on their expert knowledge. selected on the basis of the workshop's These indicators complement the community- poverty rankings; interviews with refugees derived indicators described in Box o. allowed field teams to gather data on an * Household income eighth, war-affected zone in which field * Infrastructure development work was impossible. • Regional share of GDP * Health The study's findings provided rich detail * Education services about different types of poverty and vulner- * Female school attendance a a g a o * Birth rate ablity, and greatly amplffied or modified * Death rate X the workshop's conclusions and percep- * Labor emigration tions. The team found that the depth and =__________________ _ incidence of poverty was particularly pronounced in rural areas and in the The final wealth ranking showed that the south-particularly in isolated areas and in lowest-ranked districts shared at least one areas experiencing insecurity and civil of three characteristics: remoteness from conflict. People urgently wanted peace, main centers, mountainous terrain, and securitv, the rule of law, and a stronger civil prevalence of civil conflict. Although inter- society; improved ability to meet their basic national NGO relief and rehabilitation needs (food, clothing, shelter, health, and efforts were concentrated in many of the education); and better access to productive poorest zones, a number of areas were assets to increase self-sufficiency and to needy but neglected. Workshop findings produce tradable commodities. Some of the were used to design the qualitative field assessment's main findings include: research on poverty, livelihood strategies, * Local priorities for poverty alleviation are and project opportunities. (in order of importance) security, food, Box 2. Ranking Wealth Using Pairwise Ranking Tajikistan's 54 districts were ranked on a wealth-poverty scale using pairwise ranking. The instrument used was the "round robin"-that is, every district was compared with every other district within the province-with a score of 2 entered in the better-off district's row and a score of 0 in the worse-off district's row (equally ranked districts scored 1-1). Thus all the "matches" had a score of 2-0, 1-1, or 0-2. This double-entrv method is useful for error-checking, with the rows (points for) denoting relative wealth and the columns (points against) denoting relative poverty. Gorno-Badakhshan, the region with the fewest districts, illustrates the method (see table below). Pairwise ranking is useful in cases where statistical data are fuzzy or insufficient, and helps to control bias. As a group exercise, it was readily understood by the participants, stimulating lively debate and generating final consensus. The method can be also be used to rank households within a village, or villages within a district. It can work equally well with high-level professionals (as here), with community members with little formal education, or with mixed groups. Ranking poverty by district in the Gorno-Badakhshan region Kalay- Ishko- Rosht- Wealth Wealth humb shim Murghab kala Rushan Shugnan Vanch score rank Kalayhumb - 2 2 2 2 2 2 12 1 Ishkoshim 0 - 1 1 0 0 0 2 5 Murghab 0 1 - 1 0 0 0 2 5 Roshitkala 0 1 1 - 0 0 0 2 5 Roshan 0 2 2 2 - 1 0 7 3 Shugnan 0 2 2 2 1 - O 7 3 Vanch 0 2 2 2 2 2 - 10 2 Povertv score 0 10 10 10 5 5 2 42 Poverty rank 7 1 1 1 4 4 6 Box 3. People's Survival Strategies Differ Depending on Where They Live Isolated villages: Town/district center: * Sell assets, especially cattle, to buy staples * Eam salaries from multiple forms of employment * Consume home production (dairy products, bread, * Earn supplementary, informal incomes small amounts of fruits and vegetables) *Remittances * Collect hay and medicinal herbs for sale -Market sales * Work on rented land as hired hands or in exchange for fuel * Sell personal assets * Steal produce, especially from collective farm or rented land *Rely on child labor Villages near district center: War-affected villages: * Engage in home production for consumption and sale * Consume lower quality and quantity of food * Market sales * Sell products produced on household plots * Rent land * Sell personal assets, including cattle, construction * Salaries materials, and household items (blankets, pillows) * Begorsteal * Work in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) -Rely on humanitarian assistance clothing, and shelter. Next on the list some urban ones. It is highly unequal, were health and education. heavily influenced by local political Rural households without land, connections, and a major basis of employment, or men are particula.rly economic inequality. vulnerable, especially where local * Sharp regional differences exist in the harassment occurs. determinants of poverty, potential - . . ~~~~~~~~resources, and livelihood strategies (see a Depletion of assets has been dramatic and resoc and l og continuous, and is a major route by which vulnerable households of modest incomes * Local insecurity and harassment by have become impoverished. soldiers, police, and local bullies seriously Access to land has become a dominant impede efforts by the poor to improve their circumstances. concern for poor rural households and Box 4. Causes of Poverty and Sources of Opportunities and Resources, by Region Region Causes of poverty Opportunities and resources Kurgan Tyube War (loss of assets and manpower) Access to markets Insecurity, lawlessness Widely availabe irrigation Lack of male labor power Remittances Gorno-Badakhshan Historical dependence on outside Humanitarian assistance food sources Insufficient land resources Local leaders answerable to NGOs Limited access to markets Kuliab Historic low levels of household Labor power (especially men) asset accumulation Low level of social infrastructure Insufficient land for cattle and grain production Poor water supply Ghram Ongoing conflict Cash crops Insecurity and absence of rule of law Previously high level of assets Loss of assets and male labor power Remittances Reduced access to markets Leninabad Unemployment Fertile land Insufficient land in some areas Highlv industrialized Low levels of water supply Good access to markets Pockets of isolation in mountainous areas Dushanbe and Unemployment Access to markets Western RRS Low salaries and pensions Access to bureaucracies, industries Environmental degradation Industrialized Absence of rule of law Good land l Households are interested in partici- * Start building stakeholder consensus on patory projects aimed at alleviating poverty alleviation efforts, which will shift poverty; local formal and informal from emphasizing social protection and institutions, if strengthened, could help transfers to working with communities for counteract local abuses of official power. sustainable development and involving them in conceptualizing problems and * Locally selected poverty indicators (see finding solutions Box 5) were much more specific and much more closely related to survival needs e Provide a basis for subsequent than the expert-derived indicators (see quantitative, studies that will contribute to Box 1). a project impact evaluation baseline and a povertv assessment Influence and Outcomes p Avert risks that local elites might divert The social assessment process and find- project benefits ings contributed to project preparation by identifying and describing poor people's Contribute to the assessment of priorities for poverty alleviation. These internationai NGO programs for possible priorities were taken into account both in inclusion in the project the selection of international NGO programs In addition to helping shape project for support and in the location and identifi- preparation, the social assessment cation of microprojects. The NGO programs contributed to: selected for the project are shelter recon- struction, income-generating activities for dPolicy dialogue, by stimulating female-headed households, group-guaran- discussions of the potential role of small- teed lending schemes, and agricultural scale, participatory microproJects reform. The social assessment also enabled * Local capacity to undertake rapid project planners to: appraisal e Use the same methodology in local * Quantitative studies, now underway, that poverty ranking workshops to identify will enable a national assessment of priority regions for small-scale poverty and an integrated evaluation of investments based on an improved project impact. understanding of poverty and opportunity Finally, the social assessment enabled the in terms of social groupings, gender, project team to identify major risks, such as local officials' unwillingness to admit the Box 5. Local Wealth Indicators and existence of poverty or prioritize the needs Poverty Priorities of the poor, the politicization of wealth and poverty, the vested interests of the new Local participants surveyed in the field study rural elites, discrimination against "foreign- identified a set of indicators that were much ers" from other parts of the country and more specific, and much more closely related to against people without influential local survival needs, than those that had been derived connections, and the difficulties of women, by: the urban decisionmakers (see Box 1):epcal ioso nare oe,i especially widows or unmarried women, in * Households' ability to provide for basic needs finding socially acceptable economic activi- *Male labor power availability at the household ties. These risks are now being taken into level account in project design and in training o Depletion of assets (cattle, personal property) programs. e Lack of access to productive assets * Lack of employment • Lack of ties. to ruling local clans Social Development Notes are published informally by the Social Development Family in the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank. For additional copies, contact Social Development Publications, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA, Fax: 202-522-3247, E-mail: sdpublications@worldbank.org. Prirtec on Recycled Paper 4